Sex Offender Chased From Four States

Published 7:00 pm, Wednesday, January 15, 2003

A convicted sex offender has been chased, punched, followed by police, filmed from television helicopters and harassed by protesters since his release from prison four months ago.

David Siebers, 45, has been run out of Michigan, Ohio and Kentucky, and has moved to several locations in New Mexico, state officials said.

He left Toledo, Ohio, after the police bought him a bus ticket to Kentucky.

Siebers was in Kentucky for about a day, according to Ashland, Ky., Police Chief Thomas E. Kelly. Police notified Siebers that he must register as a sex offender if he wanted to stay, but Siebers was gone the next day, Kelly said.

In Albuquerque, Siebers has been followed by reporters and police. He stayed in different places outside the city for several weeks, and moved to rural Las Nutrias last week after two people let him park his trailer on their land, 50 miles south of Albuquerque.

Signs placed on the fence across the street read: "Keep Your Women/Children Away," "Molester Lives Here," and "Go back where you came from _ Hell."

Siebers, 45, served nine years in prison in Michigan for armed robbery and rape beginning in 1979. Months after his release, he was arrested for trying to lure a 10-year-old girl into his car and was imprisoned for 10 years.

After his release in September, investigators in Michigan told the Grand Rapids Press that Siebers would hurt others. A prosecutor, William Forsyth, said an FBI profile showed that Siebers was still dangerous.

Siebers has refused to talk to The Associated Press.

"The really troubling thing about this sort of response is that it does nothing to protect the community from criminal sexual violence," said Peter Simonson, head of the American Civil Liberties Union in New Mexico. "It simply shifts responsibility for monitoring these individuals onto another community."

Mayor Martin Chavez has ordered the city police to keep monitoring Siebers, even though he is no longer in their jurisdiction.

"I'm not picking on him," Chavez said. "He comes with this label `will re-offend.' Not `might,' but `will.'"

Jack Furlong, a New Jersey attorney who has given advice to Siebers' family in Michigan, said he has repeatedly asked Forsyth make public the FBI report, and the prosecutor has refused.

Furlong said Chavez is subjecting Siebers to a modern-day witch hunt.

"There is nothing more frustrating to a former offender than to be accused of future dangerousness without more information," Furlong said.

On Wednesday, a man punched Siebers while he was doing yard work. A deputy who was watching Siebers rushed to his rescue and arrested the man, authorities said.

Karen Chavez, who now lives near Siebers, said she worries about the danger to and from Siebers.

"It would be just as easy for someone to bury him out here in the desert as it would be for him to take another victim," she said. "I don't want to see anybody get hurt."